


No other can reduce

by zinjadu



Series: Wed to Blight [26]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Action, Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship, Darkspawn, Deep Roads (Dragon Age), Dragon Age: Origins Quest - A Paragon of Her Kind, F/M, Gen, Grumpy Oghren, Introspection, or a weird one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-14 16:49:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18952096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zinjadu/pseuds/zinjadu
Summary: The dwarf stood in front of Caitwyn Tabris and offered help.Oghren stood in front of the girl and asked for a chance.Unexpectedly introspective Oghren is unexpected.





	No other can reduce

_ People seem to forget about me these days. _

Bloodshot green eyes glimmered from underneath heavy brows.  The Warrior’s face was puffy and red with drink, heavy bags under his eyes.  Oghren, his name was Oghren, and he’d been an occasional sight in Orzammar in general and Tapsters in particular.  Often slurring or yelling. Once passed out on a table.

Caitwyn had given him little thought other than to avoid him.

Yet in the shadow of the doorway to the Deep Roads, she listened as he spoke his piece.  They were looking for his wife, after all, and if he knew anything it could be the difference between finding her and coming back empty handed.  Empty handed and without a king to order the warriors of Orzammar to the surface to fight.

“Well, what’d’ya say Warden?  We have a deal?” His voice was rough, his blazing red hair and whiskers unkempt, and he generally looked like he’d spent the night in a gutter.  For all she knew, he might have. But his armor was well kept, and the massive axe strapped to his back had a wicked edge to it. Glancing up at Alistair, her fellow Warden only shrugged, so Caitwyn stood straight and drew the mask of  _ the Warden _ over her face: cool eyes, smooth features, chin tilted ever so slightly up.

“We have a deal.”  She extended her hand, and the dwarf clasped her forearm heartily, his fingers clamping down with the force of a man clinging to the edge of a cliff.  

 

* * *

 

“She’s been this way for sure.”  Oghren’s fingers traced the rune set low on a toppled pillar before he levered himself up with a grunt.  He was getting old. Or he wasn’t drunk enough for this. It was hard to tell.

The Warden, the little elf one, peered at the rune.  She bent double like she’d never woken up with an aching back and righted herself without a hint of discomfort.  “Does she just have the one rune she uses?”

“Why you ask?”  He narrowed his eyes, still not sure how far to trust her.  She was a tiny thing. Taller than him like everyone else, but there wasn’t much to her.  Slip of a thing, really, barely more than a girl.

“So I can help you look for them,” she said like it should’ve been obvious.  His brow furrowed, but she must’ve thought he was stupid because she kept explaining.  “Since I often scout ahead, I can try to find them more quickly so we don’t go too far off track again.”

“I understand that, Warden,” he growled.  She was so small, so quick, like some kind of scurrying creature, but those bright green eyes regarded him and didn’t blink and her face didn’t twist up in irritation at his bluster.  The young always thought they were invincible, didn’t they? He had, when he’d made a name for himself in the Provings and the Deep Roads. Well, she’d find out soon enough that it wasn’t a body that broke first.

He almost felt sorry for her, her and the boy that followed her around like a lost nug.

“I won’t make you.  She’s your wife, but two sets of eyes are better than one.”  Though her face was a mask and her eyes reflected the diffuse light of the magma like some kind of ghoul, her voice was soft.  Like she could see past the haze of beer that followed him like a cloud, past his eyes and right into his brain. He didn’t like it.

“Ah, don’t you worry about old Oghren.  I can still see well enough, girl.” Girl, not  _ Warden _ .  Let her chew on that for a while.  She was his chance to find Branka again, but that was no sodding reason to spill his guts to girl who’d probably never been so much as kissed.

“Alright, but if I see more like this, I’ll let you know.”  She trotted past him, calling her dog and boy to her. Oghren huffed, not sure what he’d been expecting but it hadn’t been that.  There was still a long way to go, just to get through Caradin’s Cross and find the Ortan Thaig; past there what they would find was anyone’s guess.

The Stone itself was no guide.  Under his feet, against his hand, it was rotten from the inside out.  It only held the corruption of the darkspawn now. But he was no Shaper to get twisted into knots about what was lost to history.  What mattered was getting back what  _ he _ had lost.

“Don’t go too far, Warden,” he called.  “I’ll show you the other runes, and you can bash your knees looking for them.”

She waited for him to catch up to her, and the smile she gave him was barely present in the corners of her mouth and the crinkling of her eyes.  It was like she was looking through him all over again, right down to his bones. But how a slip of a girl could look at him like that, like she had the weight of stone in her soul, he didn’t know.  Nor did he really care.

He was here for one reason, and when he brought his wife back to Orzammar he wouldn’t let her be used again.  There’d been enough of that all around.

 

* * *

 

Caitwyn slunk across the open expanse of stone, closer and closer to the clump of darkspawn that had gathered near the base of a bridge.  The high arc of the bridge extended up and over a wide channel of magma, and heat radiated off of it like a forge. Her mouth was parched, and her thirst was made worse knowing they had to carefully ration their water.  

The darkspawn, their rotten and twisted forms becoming familiar from day after day of exposure, squatted in a haphazard semi-circle.  They grunted and squawked at each other, shoving and pushing while they ate with animal-sharp teeth in person-like mouths. An itch worked its way across her scalp, but she tamped down the urge to scratch it.  Not even able to wipe a wet cloth across her face, her whole body was covered in grit and itched like she was crawling with fleas. Worse than the time she’d actually had fleas.

The physical discomfort was welcome, because it helped keep her sense of the darkspawn, their writhing, oozing mass, at bay.

One of the darkspawn sat up suddenly, sniffing at the heavy air like a hound as its bile-yellow eyes began to scan across the sloping ground.  Caitwyn sank fully to the stone and wiggled behind a boulder. She glanced behind her; there was no sign of the others. Good, they were staying back like she’d told them.

Shifting around on her belly, she winced as the armor of her metal scraped across the stone, but the snuffling and snorting of the darkspawn kept on like they hadn’t heard her.  The trigger of the line-tap wasn’t far. If she could just reach it, then she could reset it to trip  _ them _ up.  Just a little further, she stretched her arm out and her fingers grazed the sinew line.  

Not thinking about where that sinew came from, she gave the knot a little tug to test it.  It would give, with a bit of effort, and she dragged herself closer to get both hands on it.  She bit off the glove of her right hand, tucking it into her belt, and then held the line taught with her left before picking at the knot with her ungloved hand.  It wasn’t tight, the darkspawn not terribly deft, and she barely breathed as she worked.

The knot loosened, and a surge of triumph shot through her.  In spite of the heat and the darkness, the itching and the hunger and the thirst, the way the corruption pressed and pulsed across her skin only barely kept at bay, the way Alistair grew paler and sicker with every step,  _ this _ she could do.  Use the darkspawn’s own tools against them while she skulked and slid right under their noses, her presence folded in on itself.  This was  _ fun _ .  Biting her lip to hold a chuckle inside of her mouth, she tugged on the knot one more time— 

Metal flashed above her, and Caitwyn rolled away.  A blade struck up sparks as it hit the stone. A hurlock growled at her and one clawed hand swiped at her arm.  The other darkspawn howled like dogs at a hunt, and her stomach clenched. She was a rabbit, just a rabbit made to run.  A genlock surmounted the boulder she’d been hiding behind, a filthy pitted dagger held high, and dove for her. She rolled again, this time getting her legs underneath her and drawing her dagger.  Pivoting on her heel to run, she jumped back just before a spiked mace swung through the space where her ribs had been. 

A bellow ripped through the cavern, nearly as guttural as the darkspawn’s own voices.  The creatures lifted their heads and hissed at the intrusion. Oghren careened toward the clump of darkspawn, his long-handled greataxe swinging in a wide arc.  The dwarf belly laughed as they swarmed him like insects, and he exulted, “Come to Oghren!”

No longer hemmed in by the darkspawn, Caitwyn dropped her dagger and drew her bow.  She drew a bead on the hurlock and fired. Her arrow pierced its neck and it screamed as a gout of black blood fountained out from the wound and its mouth.  It still fought, and it dragged itself to the dwarf, its body toppling forward.

Oghren batted it away like it was nothing, his axe slicing open its middle spilling rotten guts onto the stone.  

“Oh Maker.”  Alistiar’s mutter reached her even through the clamor.  His green-tinged skin betrayed his constant illness, but he still fought.  He marked her position and bulled toward her, bashing his shield into a genlock’s face and the creature’s head snapped back on its neck.  It fell in a boneless heap, and in a stride Alistair reached her. Then, just like they’d practiced, he used his shield to give her partial cover while she fired at her targets and he prevented her from being flanked.

The thick air resounded with the cries and clash of battle, blades ringing and the hair-raising crack of magic.  Caitwyn nocked, drew, and loosed, fighting from behind the pack as the others kept their attention focused forward.  Oghren, however, pressed into the middle of the pack of darkspawn as if he didn’t care if they tore him apart or not.  His rumbling yells were like the shaking of the earth itself, and his axe bit and tore apart the darkspawn like the jaws of an angry dog.

The last darkspawn went down hard, under a hail of arrows and lightning, its head cleaved in two by that wicked axe, and Oghren stood over it panting heavily covered in the black blood and bitter bile of the darkspawn.  Wynne began to check on the others, but it was like there was a wall around Oghren, a palpable aura of  _ red _ that threatened to push away anything that dared come too close.

She laid her bare hand on Alistair’s armored arm.  He caught his breath, leaning closer to her for a moment to focus on her presence and then nodded her on.  On light feet she approached Oghren, intentionally scuffing her boots on the blood-slick stone. 

“Oghren?”  At her voice, he raised his head and his eyes were wide and wild, like he wasn’t  _ seeing _ whatever he was looking at.  Resting her bow over her shoulder, she held up her hands—her right still bare—and tried once more.  “Oghren, thank you.”

He blinked and stood up straight as if he hadn’t recently charged into a pack of darkspawn and dismembered a good half of them by himself.  He narrowed his eyes and stomped to where she’d dropped her dagger. Without ceremony, he shoved it at her. 

“Need to take better care of your gear down here, Warden.  No smiths, we might have to start robbing the graves to get by,” he rumbled.

“Hey!”  Alistair’s indignant shout carried over other, less vocal objections from others, and was rounded out by a grunt from Sten and a biting, “Tis remarkable to hear a lecherous sot offer such sage wisdom,” from Morrigan.  Caitwyn dismissed the whole thing with a wave of her hand as Oghren’s gaze slid away from hers.

How long had he been kicked around by his own people?  A man who had been proud, had been a warrior? Now, barely above a duster, barely tolerated?  His pride and glory vanished and only the sour taste of fermented mushrooms left to him. He expected to be kicked now.  Like the alley dogs of Denerim. But he’d charged in, which meant he’d been watching for her. 

She kept her face perfectly composed and blank.  He flinched as if expecting a blow. Instead, she spoke in a language he might just understand.  “I’ll trust you to point out the good ones. The ones with all the treasure. What do dead Nobles need with their fancy hats anyway?”

His heavy brows knotted as he tried to figure out if she was mocking him or not, but only after a heartbeat he threw his head back and laughed heartily.  Clapping her the shoulder so hard she nearly fell over, he sighed. “Ah Warden, you might just be alright. Sorry, Caitwyn. You’re alright, girl. Next time, let me distract them a little, eh?  More fun that way.”

“You might be the only person who thinks of fighting darkspawn as fun.”

“Takes all kinds, girl, takes all kinds.”

Caitwyn did smile then.  He wasn’t wrong.

 

* * *

 

“Ortan Thaig.”  Oghren couldn’t believe they’d made this far.  After the slog of the Cross, he’d begun to doubt they’d ever see this place, Branka’s runes or no.  The magma channels that had once fed the Thaig had been directed elsewhere or otherwise blocked, leaving the cavern dark except for some crystals that glowed like the ones on the golem.  Enough light for him and the elves, but the humans stumbled, and it made him laugh.

This was  _ good _ .  They were getting somewhere, and he’d found evidence that Branka’d made it this far, too.  

“Does anyone know what’s past this place?”  Caitwyn’s hushed tones were fitting, he thought.  This was a tomb, in a way. A place where his people had fought to the bitter end and died hard during the First Blight.  But they’d taken down all the darkspawn they could. The Stone in this place was still solid though, not eaten away by the corruption of the Taint.  It welcomed his feet like it missed the step of dwarves. It made him smile.

“We have the old maps, girl,” he said.  She was a girl, nothing would change that.  But she was a girl who might just know more than he’d given her credit for.  “How good they are, hrm, don’t have much hope for that. If the darkspawn ruined the Cross as much as they did, can’t imagine they were any kinder to the parts of the Deep Roads they’ve been holding since the First Blight.”

“We’ll have to see, then, and hope those runes keep pointing the right direction.”  She took a cautious step forward, and he held back though he wanted to saunter on through.  There were no darkspawn here. He couldn’t sense them like her or the boy, but since the boy didn’t look liable to throw up and the Stone itself was whole, he didn’t see much reason to be concerned.  

“That’s bleeding obvious,” he muttered, jabbing her hip with his elbow.  She had a dry sense of humor, and sometimes he couldn’t tell if she was being serious or not, but he liked that she could take a joke.  Didn’t take herself entirely seriously like some of the others. 

She ground her foot against the stone, and her gaze went out of focus.  The other Warden drew even with her and did the same. Then they glanced at each other, not those sickly sweet glances they did when they thought no one was looking (there was no avoiding it, and everyone always looked; couldn’t look away, like watching a one-sided match in the Provings, it was too stomach churning to be believed).  

“Begs the question,” Caitwyn said, like they’d been having a conversation, just one no one else could hear.  Oghren rolled his eyes. “If we can’t sense them here, what’s keeping them out?”

“I have a bad feeling that we’re going to find out,” the boy replied.  And that was more than enough for Oghren.

“Well you kids have fun with that.  I’m going to find more runes and—”

“Oghren don’t!”

“Watch out!”

A spectral sword sank into his chest and he fell back, goggling at the ghostly form that materialized in front of him.  Cold, a cold deeper than anything he’d never known, pierced his chest and drove the breath from his body. His heart shuddered and jerked and then stopped.  He gaped like a cavefish and the ground suddenly struck the side of his head before the world went black.

The next thing he knew a voice was calling his name and something was shaking his shoulder.  He groaned and grumbled and batted away whatever was making the world swirl inside his own head.  “Bloody, sodding, get off me you damned schleets!”

“Schleets?”

“Is that some kind of creature?”

“Maybe?”

“Oghren, you need to open your eyes.”  He swallowed and cracked one bleary eye to see the finely lined face of one of the mages— _ Wynne _ —hovering over his.  A grin split his face, and he didn’t care that his whole head pounded like a bronto had kicked it.  

“Now  _ there’s _ a sight to wake up to.”

Wynne huffed and stood.  “He’s fine. Some rest is all he will need.  Now that this Thaig is cleared of its… inhabitants, we should probably take advantage of it.”

“Thank you, Wynne.  I’ll think on it.” A different voice, this one had a lilt to it unlike the rest; the Warden, the girl.  Caitwyn. The only person in the last two years who’d ever helped him. Not his own family, not his own caste, not even the Assembly that had raised his wife to the status of Paragon.  The little surfacer girl who didn’t know him from a nug.

“Aw, there’s the girl!  What happened?”

“The dwarves who died here, some of them became ghosts.  Wynne and Morrigan both were surprised by that. They didn’t think dwarves could become ghosts.”

“The Stone.  They didn’t return to the Stone.  Restless, defending their home. What’s left of it.”

“Well, we moved you somewhere safe, but there turned out to be more than ghosts here.  There were old golems, still functioning, a lot of spiders, and one very nasty demon.”

“Branka!”  He sat up and promptly wished he hadn't.  His head ached like it was about to split open and he clenched his teeth against throwing up.  He’d finally found something harder than his head. Branka would like that.

“I found her runes near one of the exits.  My best guess is that with so many dwarves, the ghosts and golems didn’t bother them as they passed through.  The spiders wouldn’t attack so large a party either, and well. The demon was down to me and Zevran not leaving things well enough alone, we’ll say that.”

“Ha!  You had a lot of fun without me, girl.  Feeling a bit hurt.” He put on an exaggerated grimace, though it wasn’t too exaggerated.  He’d gotten used to fighting beside people again, and the idea of him being laid up and out the fight  _ again _ didn’t sit well with him.

“Consider yourself all rested up for what’s to come next.”  Her tone was hard, and he realized there was a shadow around her eyes, one that hadn’t been there before.  Something else besides fights had happened, and he might have to get the whole truth out of her. But not now, not while his teeth still felt loose.

“And what’s that?  Gonna keep me in suspense?”

“We’re going to take a smaller group past the Thaig while the rest hold this place.  You, me, Morrigan and Shale.”

“Now you’re talking girl!  Alright, I’ll forgive you this once, but next time you get me right back up and point me at the enemy.  I’ll hit him even if he’s undead!”

“Oghren, of you, I believe that.”

He laughed, even though it made the ache in his head spike through his neck and chest.  For the first time in years he felt like himself again. And to think, he had a slip of an elf girl to thank for it.


End file.
